


Torao Crossing

by Milo



Series: That College AU Where Luffy and Law Steal Zoro's Jacket [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5059405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milo/pseuds/Milo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Video games bring people together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torao Crossing

Luffy loved video games. Less than food, but more than other things. It wasn’t really a secret to anyone, but it was one of the lesser known things about himself. His favorite games tended to be fighting games--and among his friends he was the resident king of Smash Brothers.

But Luffy stuck to one game more than any other; Animal Crossing. It was a present from Nami on his nineteenth birthday. She had hoped to teach him some lesson, something something money, something something debt. But Luffy enjoyed the game in his own way. In fact, he was so taken with it that he would sit on his bed for three straight hours doing daily game things every single day.

His roommate and best friend Zoro, having given up video games when he was a kid, didn’t understand the appeal.

“You’ve been staring at that thing for way too long, Luffy,” Zoro said. “You ought to do something else before you get all sore.”

“Maybe later,” Luffy said, eyes not leaving the screen of his 3DS. Zoro walked over to him and tried to look at the screen. Luffy looked up at him. “...What?”

“Nothing. What are you even doing?”

“I’m trying to return someone’s lost book,” Luffy said, returning to the game. “Someone dropped it on the bridge and I gotta see who it belongs to.”

“Is that all you do?” Zoro asked.

“No, there’s other things,” Luffy said. “You can build things and buy furniture and there’s a lot of animals you can make friends with!”

“Hm,” Zoro hummed. “It sounds kind of boring. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten tired of it.”

“I can’t get tired of it!” Luffy said. “If I get tired of it, then all my friends in the game are gonna move away! And I don’t want them to move away.” Luffy squinted at the screen. “So I’m gonna make sure they stay by playing every day.”

“Alright.” Zoro moved away for him and headed for the door, jacket hanging over his arm. “Well, I’m heading out for a run,” he said. “I should be back in like an hour or so. Don’t eat all the lunch meat, okay? I want some of that.”

After Zoro closed the door behind him, Luffy paused to look at the door. He reached down onto the bedspread below him and gripped the empty bag where the turkey lunchmeat had been roughly an hour ago. Zoro wouldn’t be happy. Oh well.

Luffy went back to focusing on Animal Crossing. His little villager character, decorated with a straw hat and messy black hair that matched his own, wandered around as he went from animal to animal in an attempt to return the book that he’d found on the ground. Eventually he found that it was Tako the octopus that had dropped it and he smiled, feeling a little fulfilled with the tiny task.

He purused the shops for anything interesting, buying an eyepatch and a melon hat from the accessory shop, putting the former on his character immediately. With this last stop, Luffy’s daily duties in game were over.

Luffy hurried away to the dock by the ocean where he knew that Kap’n would be waiting for him. Lately Luffy had gotten into visiting the island using Club Tortimer. There was something about the surprise of meeting anyone from anywhere that sparked him into going every day. He’d met people who lived in other parts of the world, and people who he couldn’t understand the language of, but he always had fun regardless.

Today he arrived on the island alone. He wandered about, but no other Club Tortimer members showed up. With a shrug, he went off to collect the island’s fruits and bugs and a few fish. Luffy wasn’t very good at catching any of the animals, but he had fun in the chase.

It was when he deposited his catch of the day that someone arrived; a character wearing designer clothes, covered in spots and fake fur, and a fancy hat. Brimming with excitement, Luffy typed them a message:

  * luffy: HI IM LUFFY!




The other character wandered around the lobby of the island, picking through the things available to buy as if he was on a mission for one particular thing. Luffy simply followed them as they went. Eventually, they greeted him back:

  * Torao: Hello. Nice to meet you.




It was so simple and yet Luffy found himself enthralled with this polite little character. He walked his character over to the minigame desk and quickly tapped out another message.

  * luffy: do u want 2 play mingames??



  * Torao: Sure.




Luffy selected one of his favorite minigames; the one where he could pop as many balloons as he could manage, tied with the minigame where he smacked a lawn mower with a hammer. But that one wasn’t an option. He settled down on one of the chairs with a pillow--he always selected one with a pillow--and watched Torao settle down across from him.

In the end, Torao was better than him. He popped more balloons, caught more fish, caught more bugs, and was twice as fast as him at the gardening game. Luffy complimented Torao on how good he was but Torao shrugged it off, literally.

As he continued to play with Torao, Luffy heard Zoro enter back into the room. His head popped up. Zoro mopped off his face, which was dripping with sweat, with his jacket. He looked at Luffy with a frown.

“Have you been sitting there this whole time?” Zoro asked. Luffy nodded and then Zoro shook his head. “How about you take a break then? We could go get dinner.”

Luffy glanced back down at the game. Torao walked past him, net in hand, aiming for a bug on the tree nearby. “Alright,” he said. “Let me just tell Torao that I gotta go.”

“Torao?”

“Yeah! I met him today and we were having a lot of fun!” Luffy said. “It would be rude to just disappear on him, y’know?”

Zoro nodded slowly, not seeming to understand the complexities of internet gaming. Luffy typed a quick message to Torao that he had to leave. Torao stopped going after the bug. There was a pause as the other person typed out a message in reply.

  * Torao: Oh, I see.



  * Torao: It was nice meeting you.




Luffy grinned at the screen and quickly wrote out another message.

  * luffy: do u wan t2 b friends?




Another pause as he waited for a reply.

  * Torao: Alright.




Luffy quickly set up Torao into his Best Friends list, which was almost filled completely with people. The moment Torao’s name registered, Luffy said his goodbyes and then left the island. He shut his 3DS and left it on the bed. Then he got off of the bed, stretched out his legs, and sighed.

“Oh man, I feel like I’ve been sitting _forever_. Bleh,” Luffy said, sticking his tongue out. “My legs are all cramped.”

“Told you.”

“What if we go run around for a while after we eat, huh?” Luffy suggested. “You usually go for an evening run too, right?”

Zoro smiled. “I can’t say no to that,” he said.

* * *

 

Torao messaged him later. And Luffy had to send a message back, which Torao responded to within a couple hours--this left them in a seemingly endless conversation loop.

Luffy soon found himself exchanging daily messages with Torao. He asked Torao lots of questions; what his favorite color was, his favorite things to eat, what he liked to do other than play Animal Crossing.

Torao liked the color red. He loved fish and hated bread--something that Luffy found both strange and hilarious. He liked to read more than anything else. Luffy asked him how old he was; he was twenty six, seven years older than Luffy. Torao always spelled his messages with proper capitalization and punctuation. Torao was always polite and friendly. Luffy invited him over to his town and Torao even took it upon himself to pick some of the weeds.

Luffy found that Torao always had something thoughtful to say to him, regardless if Luffy was complaining about homework or about being hungry or even Zoro’s snoring in the middle of the day. He liked Torao. It was a shame that Torao was confined to a little electronic handheld and a good internet connection.

With this new friend in his life, Luffy found himself slip from his usual habits of talking to all of his animal friends in town to only conversing with Torao. Torao eventually started to talk to him less and less, but Torao had said that he was very busy with his studies so it was okay. Luffy still hung on his every reply. Zoro still didn’t understand the appeal.

“What, so you’ve got a pen pal?” he said.

“Yeah, kinda!” Luffy said. “But it’s different over the internet, Zoro, I don’t have to wait like five weeks for a letter from him.”

“Huh,” Zoro said. “Where’s he from?”

Luffy went quiet. His eyebrows knitted together. “...Yknow, I never really thought to ask,” Luffy said. “It doesn’t really matter. Far away is far away.”

 

* * *

 

Three weeks later, Luffy passed Torao on Streetpass.

There was a little Mii named Torao in his Mii plaza; it looked similar to the Animal Crossing Torao, but of course wasn’t quite the same. But Luffy knew that it was _his_ Torao; the way he talked was just like Torao, and the last game he’d played was New Leaf. And it wasn't like there were all too many Toraos lurking around anyway. In his excitement he’d woken up Zoro from his dead sleep two hours early. Zoro was cranky about it.

“What?” Zoro grumbled.

“You remember Torao, right?” Luffy asked. “Well, I just got a Streetpass hit from a guy named Torao!”

Zoro blinked sleepily. “A what? You passed Torao on the street?” he asked. Then, after a yawn, he added, “Why didn’t you stop and say hello?”

Luffy laughed. “No, Zoro, I mean in the game,” he said.

“Oh…” Zoro put his head back down on the pillow. “So, this means…?”

“It means that he’s somewhere that I’ve been!” Luffy plopped down on his bed and swung his legs back and forth. “But where did I go yesterday? I don’t remember doing anything weird…” He looked at Zoro. “Zoro, where did we go yesterday?” But Zoro was fast asleep again. Luffy huffed and shook his shoulder. “Damn it, Zoro, this is important!”

“Hnn….” Zoro scrunched up his face and withdrew into the blankets. “Luffy, can you not bug me at ass o’clock in the morning?”

Luffy glanced at the wooden lion clock on their wall. “...Zoro, it’s like ten AM,” he said.

“Exactly.” Zoro turned away and faced the wall instead. “Why don’t you go ask Usopp for help?”

“Great idea, Zoro!” Luffy exclaimed. “I was hanging out with Usopp yesterday, too! And he’s got a 3DS, maybe he passed Torao!”

Leaving Zoro behind to sleep, Luffy rushed off to Usopp’s dorm.

Usopp lived on the floor below Luffy and Zoro and was usually up before the rest of them, so Luffy didn’t feel bad about pounding on his door and asking to come in. It turned out that Usopp had been tinkering with a project for class all morning and was more than happy to take a break to chat with Luffy.

Luffy excitedly told Usopp about the situation, even going so far as to shove his 3DS in Usopp’s face to prove his point. But, unfortunately, Usopp had not passed anyone named Torao in the past few days.

“Hmm…” Luffy pulled his legs into a pretzel shape and sat on the bed. “That means Torao wasn’t anywhere that we were yesterday,” he said. “Where did we go yesterday?”

“You helped me set up a couple hammocks in front of the engineering building,” Usopp said. “Then after that we got lunch with Zoro, and I went off to class. So you must’ve run into him either before or after that. Do you remember where you were then?”

“Well...not really,” Luffy said, frowning. “I did a lot of things yesterday.”

Usopp scratched his chin. “This was your first time passing him, right?” he said. “But you’ve been talking to him for a while. He would’ve been somewhere you don’t usually go.”

Luffy perked up. “Soooo I gotta remember where I went yesterday,” he began, “that’s also somewhere I don’t _usually_ go? Hmmm…”

“Were you with Sanji at all yesterday?” Usopp asked. “Nami?”

“Sanji works all day on Wednesday,” Luffy said. “And Nami...Oh!” Luffy leaned forward, eyes wide. “Nami takes that one class over in the building with all the nurses and stuff, right?! I don’t usually go in that building, but yesterday I went over there to give her something she left in my dorm!”

“The human health building, you mean?” Usopp said. “We could go over there if you want, check it out. Though there’s no guarantee that Torao will be in there…” He rubbed his chin. “What time did you drop in to see Nami?”

“Uhh...after lunch, I think,” Luffy said.

“Why don’t we head over there after lunch then? You go to class, I’ll go to class, and we’ll meet up after lunch.”

So that was the plan. Roughly fifteen minutes later, Luffy scurried off to class. He didn’t really pay much attention to the lecture, which was on art history and Luffy didn’t care enough about that on a normal day.

He chewed on the end of his pen while he listened to the professor, who was old enough to be a dinosaur, drone on and on about this, that, and the other thing. Luffy was too focused on Torao. He wanted to go straight to lunch so he could find Torao. But Nami would have chewed him out for skipping another class.

Art history class seemed to go on forever until finally, _finally_ , the professor released them. Luffy left in a blur of blue letterman jacket and brown bag. He met Usopp in their dorm’s cafeteria for a quick lunch--which was a travesty, because lunch, in Luffy’s mind, was serious business and should never be cut short. But he would do it for Torao. Torao was worth it.

He and Usopp made the quick trek across campus to the human health building. It was three floors and was almost exclusive to the medical students. Luffy noted that there were more people wearing scrubs than he’d seen last time he went to the doctor. He never liked doctors, so he was keen on avoiding the building altogether. He hoped to find Torao quickly so they could go somewhere else.

“Do you remember where Nami’s class was?” Usopp asked as they wandered down one of the hallways.

“Not really,” Luffy said. “I remember the floor but not the number.” He looked into each classroom as they passed by. “We’re on the right floor, I think. All these rooms have green chairs. Nami’s classroom had green chairs, too.”

Luffy leaned into one of the classrooms and Usopp had to drag him away. “Are you stupid, Luffy? All these classes are in session!” he whispered loudly. “Don’t just barge on into there.”

“What if Torao’s in there?” Luffy said.

“I doubt he’ll like it if you just walk right in on his class and bother the poor guy.”

Luffy whined a little, but figured that Usopp was probably right. They went and found a bench in the hallway to sit on and wait for a while. Luffy had his 3DS in his lap while people passed by, and he would impatiently check it every few minutes to see if Torao had passed. Torao never seemed to show up.

“Man…” Luffy said with an irritated sigh. “Where’s Torao, Usopp? I wanna see Torao…”

The class approximately ten feet from their bench let out a bunch of students--more students than Luffy had in any of his classes. He watched them all determinedly. He noted each of their faces as they passed. Was one of them Torao? Was Torao in that swarm? The group passed him by and he checked his 3DS. He got Streetpass data. But not from Torao.

Then, someone walked passed them from the left.

A man was walking off to class, a stylish single-strap backpack over one of his shoulders and a coffee in one of his hands. He seemed engrossed in his phone, and Luffy would have thought nothing of him if he hadn’t spotted his hat. It was a fluffy white hat with black spots. Luffy’s eyes widened.

He knew that hat. That was Torao’s hat.

“Torao!” he yelled. “Hey, Torao, is that you?!”

Usopp looked at him with shock. “Luffy! Shhh!” he whispered. “People are taking classes, don’t just--!”

The man paused. He looked up from his phone and looked around. Luffy felt his face strain from how wide he was smiling. “Over here, Torao!” Luffy called, voice as loud as ever. The man looked back and met Luffy’s gaze. That was about all the permission Luffy needed to run over to him and grab his shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me you were on my campus, Torao?!”

‘Torao’ tensed under Luffy’s grip. He furrowed his eyebrows as he looked Luffy over. “Do I...know you?” Torao said.

“Yeah! I’m Luffy!” Luffy said. “You know? Luffy from New Leaf?”

Realization dawned on Torao’s face. “Oh,” he said. “It certainly is a small world, isn’t it?” He looked at their surroundings before looking at Luffy again. “Listen. I have class in ten minutes, so there’s not much time to talk. Could we meet up later somewhere? The cafe, maybe?”

“Aww, but we just met you!” Then, Luffy was hit with an idea. “Oh! Oh, I know! What if we went to class with you?”

Torao stared at them with an awkward look for a bit before Usopp broke in. “We can wait,” he said, giving Luffy a hard look. “We’ll go wait for you in the cafeteria on the first floor, alright?” Luffy puffed up his cheeks. Usopp frowned at him. “ _Right_?”

“Fiiiine,” Luffy said. “I guess we can do that.”

Enticed by food, Luffy was able to say his temporary goodbyes to Torao. He allowed himself to be dragged off by a grumpy Usopp to the health building’s tiny cafeteria. It wasn’t much compared to the one in their dorm building--it had a buffet that Luffy adored to bits and pieces--or the one with all the restaurants, but it had a cafe and a place to get some sandwiches. Usopp bought him one that was loaded with extra meat.

About an hour and a half later, long after Luffy had become bored silly, Torao reappeared. He spotted Usopp and Luffy from afar and went over to them. Luffy proceeded to ask Torao about just about everything he could possibly think of; where did Torao live, what was his major, why hadn’t he seen Torao before, what other kinds of games did he play, what--

“--Calm down,” Torao said. “I can only answer so much at once. For starters, I’d prefer if you called me by my name. Not ‘Torao’.”

Luffy tilted his head to the side. “Your name isn’t Torao?” he asked.

“My name is Law,” Law said. “Just because I named my video game character ‘Torao’ doesn’t mean that’s my name. I never assumed your name was actually ‘Luffy’, after all.”

“My name _is_ Luffy, though,” Luffy said.

“...Huh,” Law said, looking both awkward and surprised. He looked at Usopp, who shrugged. “That’s...different.”

“So, Law,” Usopp began. “I like to think that, between Luffy and I, we’ve got a wide variety of classes in quite a few different buildings. But I don’t think we’ve ever seen you around before. You a commuter?”

“No, I live on campus over in the apartments,” Law said. “I mainly study here in the human health building.”

“I don’t have any classes in here,” Luffy said. “No wonder it took me so long to find you!” He rocked back in his chair. “...Shishishi! I never really thought you’d live so close to me, Torao! I should’ve asked a long time ago, and then we would’ve been able to see each other sooner!”

“Yes, I suppose I always assumed the distance between us was larger,” Law said. “It’s odd that it ended up like it did. I wasn’t expecting to meet someone nearby in a random internet encounter. But random is random, after all, and there always is that chance…”

“Wanna be best friends for real, too?” Luffy asked.

Law stared at him with an odd look on his face. “That’s...it doesn’t work like that,” he said. “If we get along, I’m sure we could be friends. If not…”

“Shishishi! You already said you wanted to be friends though!”

“I merely wanted to keep in contact--”

“But that’s through the _Best Friends_ link,” Luffy pointed out. “And we’ve been talking for a while now! I’d say we’re pretty good friends. Now we just gotta do friend things in real life!”

Luffy leaned back a bit more. But it was too much, and he toppled over, landing in an awkward heap of chair and limbs. Law looked surprised. Luffy laughed loudly and rubbed the spot where he had collided with the floor. Usopp and Law exchanged glances.

“He’s not...always like this, right?” Law asked Usopp.

Usopp stared at him. Then, he gently put a hand on Law’s shoulder and tried to give him the most comforting look possible. Luffy ran off in a flurry to the sandwich counter, asking loudly if he could have one with four different kinds of meat, not caring that the sandwiches were prepackaged. Law looked horrified.

“Welcome to friendship with Luffy, Law,” Usopp said. “You were trapped the moment he said hello.”


End file.
